Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said her Republican colleagues’ embarrassment over Donald Trump’s presidency has gotten worse now that the U.S. is in a war with Iran.
Warren discussed the matter on “The Late Show” Thursday night when host Stephen Colbert reminded Warren of when she mentioned last year that GOP lawmakers were avoiding eye contact with their political counterparts because they were ashamed of their support and commitment to Trump.
Warren said they now keep their heads completely down as they walk past Democrats on Capitol Hill.
“Their eyes just glued to the floor all the time, because they truly do understand,” Warren said, adding that their embarrassment is rooted in them knowing that the president has no idea what he’s doing in Iran.
“The president and his team cannot explain why we went to war, what the strategy is in this war, what will constitute winning this war, how to get out of this war, and the number one thing they cannot explain is how this war is helping one single person in the United States of America,” Warren said.
She then called on the GOP to work with Dems to end the conflict.
Watch the “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” clip below:
“It is time for those Republicans to help the Democrats and put an end to this war right now,” Warren said, which received a longstanding roar of applause from the audience.
But Colbert questioned what more can the GOP do now that Trump has launched the military action in the Middle East without congressional approval. Warren said they’ve been pushing Republicans to sign a bill that could stop it in its tracks.
“We actually already have laws in place called the War Powers Act, where Congress can simply say you have to put a stop to this until Congress has a chance to come in and vote,” Warren explained. “Congress, according to the Constitution, is the only one that can declare war.”
Warren says Congress has the power to push back despite any rules Trump may have already broken.
“Congress does have the power to say stop,” Warren said. “I think of it kind of like, in case you have a president who has violated the Constitution, it’s like an emergency break in a car that has lost its breaks otherwise. And that’s what we have voted on to get the Republicans to come in and say cut it off. Cut off their funding, tell them to shut the whole thing down. And the Republicans have voted against that. That is, they have voted to continue this war one, two, three, four, five times so far.”
She added: “We’re just going to keep putting this bill forward and making them vote on it until finally somebody on that side grows a spine and does it.”
She closed out her remarks saying that the war not only affects the economy but Americans’ livelihoods as well.
“Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are out there bombing halfway around the world in our names,” Warren said. “It’s not only that we’ve lost 13 American service members. We’re spending a billion dollars a day overseas. But we’re also killing people for nothing that we can explain about what we’re trying to accomplish. And I know that they don’t have a good rationale here.”
Watch the full interview segment in the video above.
